Walking leisurely on the pitch

@trungtphan writes fascinating Twitter threads breaking down business and tech concepts, and this one about the famous footballer Messi is a masterclass for entrepreneurs, and indie hackers, regarding “work smart, not hard”:

Messi is known for walking leisurely on the pitch. Many think it’s to conserve energy. There’s a more strategic reason and it’s the epitome of “work smart, not hard.”… For years, observers mocked Messi for over-walking. Messi generates space for his team by passively walking around the pitch in “high value locations”…

• Actively (“by running into open spaces”)
• Passively ("by staying in high-value locations while the play shifts away”)

The location isn’t always nearest the net (you have to account for position of all players). He usually pulls many defenders and creates scoring opportunities.

Messi’s understanding of where to be is informed by something he does at the start of most matches: Walk around for 5 minutes surveying the opponent and finding weaknesses (relatedly: he’s never scored within the fist 2 mins of a game). Messi has long been skill/brains over athletics. He was diagnosed w/ growth hormone deficiency (GHD) as a child…At 34, he’ll need to “work smart, not hard” more than ever.

I played lots of football in my school years, so using this analogy for business/tech is something I appreciate.

It made me wonder:

What’s the equivalent of “walking leisurely the pitch” for indie hacking/running an online business?

I ask this because recently I’ve been hunkering heads-on in marketing. Distributing content everywhere, tripling my publishing volume, chatting with Twitter folks are hours. But somehow at the back of my mind, there’s a nagging thought, that I might be charging ahead mindlessly.

I don’t want to do all that hard work, only to have nothing to show for.

For far, there’s not much to show for, to be honest. There’s signs of growth, but nothing in terms of revenue. I know I got to keep going some more to see the impact, but I can’t shake off the gnawing feeling that something is amiss.

I need to work smart, as much as I can work hard.

In the bigger scheme of things, this analogy also resonated because—like Messi—I’m not all that young for an indie hacker – at 42, with a toddler in the house, I have limited energy and time. I need to work smart, not hard, because I can’t outwork the younger ones. It also reminded me how I used to play mid field in football, and I ran everywhere because I had good stamina. But I cannot use my default workhorse mode now running a business.

I need the business to run itself more than I run it.

So back to the question… How can I learn to “walk leisurely on the pitch” of indie hacking?

A few things I can experiment with:

• More haste, less speed - Don’t rush headlong into marketing channels and distribution without first understanding the game and having a plan.
• Create space - I can create space by setting aside mental bandwidth or time, or by meta-cognition. The fact that I’m writing this review post is a good indicator that I’m trying to use more brains over brawn. Do more reviews, always be tracking and iterating. I got to set aside some mental bandwidth too to be able to sense and respond to opportunities. I probably should pack my schedule as tightly as I do now too.
• Spend the first 5min assessing the game - research and analyze the new platforms that I join, so that I can see the weaknesses of the competition, and see how I can get ahead of the noise. How do their algorithms work? What is everyone doing? How can I zag when everyone zigs?
• Seek out opportunities to automate or delegate - now that I’ve settled into a work flow, how can I automate more of it? Or can I hire a VA to delegate?
• Strategic positioning - Position myself in high value locations even while the play shifts away - this sounds like an interesting leverage play, but got to mull over it more.

What else can I do?